You've done a magnificent job with the terrain tbh, I probably spent more time with that code than other modders and everything you need to make the terrain more diverse is there already. All I did was add different noise functions and some logic to generate different kinds of terrain based on climate, most of the other code was left untouched.Interkarma wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:34 pm Correct, I'm using the original unmodified heightmap directly from the game files as input, and I am trying to show the terrain as I understand it was originally intended. Obviously some creative license is still required in the technical execution of this, but I looked at a any pre-release screenshots I could find and did the best I could with the data present. Old screenshots like the below were my guide.
What actually took place during my development process is a far cry from what jayhova seems to believe. This was all done in a very thoughtful manner to not only recreate Daggerfall, but to give some sense of what classic Daggerfall could have been using nothing but the data available in the game files and more modern methods.
The overall fidelity of the terrain in the game files is much higher than apparent in classic. And both comments from developers and early screenshots show that terrain was also intended to be more detailed. While I probably didn't get things exactly right, I did the best I could with what I had on the table.
If I had to make one observation it's that the high and low noise settings for the micro detail in the default terrain sampler are way too conservative and hardly make a dent in the terrain. That's actually what got me started on this, I changed the scale values for fun and saw angular bumpy terrain appear. After that I just follow the rabbit down the hole
I hope to put out my version in the first quarter of this year once I'm satisfied with the different terrain types it can create and I have a decent grasp on how to present settings to users, noise gets complicated real quick Once those settings are in, users will be able to set up the terrains more to their personal preference so they can get as close to the original DF experience as they want to, you could even make the world completely flat if you wanted to.
I don't think people even realise that Daggerfall's heightmap is not like a traditional one and that even when sampling the large 5000x2500 version, you're still left generating terrain heights in 160x160meter chunks to go beyond the originals resolution. Anyone who loads up either heightmap in a 3d terrain editor / viewer can see that the height differences are far from spectacular in the original versions so the devs probably intended to do what DFU does as well: generate the extra detail at runtime using algorithms.
Biggest mystery to me when it comes to the originals data is the white pixel which Hazelnut and I call Mount Phallus in the southwest of Tigonus. I wonder if it's a trick used to push the rest of the terrain down as the other highest point sits around 92. That's less than half of Mt. Phallus' 255